Mini-grant applications are available three times during the 2023-2024 school year. You may apply one time during this cycle. Mini-grants must be used within a year after receiving the funding. 

Applications due by:

• November 30, 2023
• January 30, 2024
• March 30, 2024

If you have questions about your eligibility to apply for funding, please email us at [email protected] before submitting your application. We are unable to provide mini-grants to schools located outside of our 23-county service area or to folks who have received a grant from us within the past year. Learn more and apply here!

The Pack Library Book Club is a book discussion group that meets the second Wednesday of each month at 10:30AM  at the library. We read and discuss a variety of book genres. The book for January 2024 is “Solito” by Javier Zamora.

Newcomers are always welcome! If you have any questions about book club, you can email [email protected] .

Exhibition and Public Programming

Vera B. Williams, an award-winning author and illustrator of children’s books, started making pictures almost as soon as she could walk. She studied at Black Mountain College in a time where summer institutes were held with classes taught by John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Williams studied under the Bauhaus luminary Josef Albers and went on to make art for the rest of her life. At the time of her death, The New York Times wrote: “Her illustrations, known for bold colors and a style reminiscent of folk art, were praised by reviewers for their great tenderness and crackling vitality.” Despite numerous awards and recognition for her children’s books, much of her wider life and work remains unexplored. This retrospective will showcase the complete range of Williams’ life and work. It will highlight her time at Black Mountain College, her political activism, and her establishment, with Paul Williams, of an influential yet little-known artist community, in addition to her work as an author and illustrator.

Author and illustrator of 17 children’s books, including Caldecott medal winner, A Chair for My Mother, Vera B. Williams always had a passion for the arts. Williams grew up in the Bronx, NY, and in 1936, when she was nine years old, one of her paintings, called Yentas, opens a new window, was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. While Williams is widely known for her children’s books today, this exhibition’s expansive scope highlights unexplored aspects of her artistic practice and eight decades of life. From groundbreaking, powerful covers for Liberation Magazine, to Peace calendar collaborations with writer activist Grace Paley, to scenic sketches for Julian Beck and Judith Malina’s Living Theater, to hundreds of late life “Aging and Illness” cartoons sketches and doodles, Vera never sat still.

Williams arrived at Black Mountain College in 1945. While there, she embraced all aspects of living, working, and learning in the intensely creative college community. She was at BMC during a particularly fertile period, which allowed her to study with faculty members Buckminster Fuller and Josef Albers, and to participate in the famed summer sessions with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, M.C. Richards, and Robert Rauschenberg. In 1948, she graduated with Josef Albers as her advisor and sculptor Richard Lippold as her outside examiner. Forever one of the College’s shining stars, Vera graduated from BMC with just six semesters of coursework, at only twenty-one years old. She continued to visit BMC for years afterward, staying deeply involved with the artistic community that BMC incubated.

Anticipating the eventual closure of BMC, Williams, alongside her husband Paul Williams and a group of influential former BMC figures, founded The Gate Hill Cooperative Artists community located 30 miles north of NYC on the outskirts of Stony Point, NY. The Gate Hill Cooperative, also known as The Land, became an outcropping of Black Mountain College’s experimental ethos. Students and faculty including John Cage, M.C. Richards, David Tudor, Karen Karnes, David Weinrib, Stan VanDerBeek, and Patsy Lynch Wood shaped Gate Hill as founding members of the community. Vera B. Williams raised her three children at Gate Hill while continuing to make work.

The early Gate Hill era represented an especially creative phase for the BMC group. For Williams, this period saw the creation of 76 covers for Liberation Magazine, a radical, groundbreaking publication. This exhibition will feature some of Williams’ most powerful Liberation covers including a design for the June 1963 edition, which contained the first full publication of MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Williams’ activism work continued throughout her life. As president of PEN’s Children Committee and member of The War Resisters league, she created a wide range of political and educational posters and journal covers. Williams protested the war in Vietnam and nuclear proliferation while supporting women’s causes and racial equality. In 1981, Williams was arrested and spent a month in a federal prison on charges stemming from her political activism.

In her late 40’s, Williams embarked in earnest on her career as a children’s book author and illustrator, a career which garnered the NY Public Library’s recognition of A Chair for My Mother as one of the greatest 100 children’s books of all time. Infinitely curious and always a wanderer at heart, Williams’ personal life was as expansive as her art. In addition to her prolific picture making, Williams started and helped run a Summerhill-based alternative school, canoed the Yukon, and lived alone on a houseboat in Vancouver Harbor. She helped to organize and attended dozens of political demonstrations throughout her adult life.

Her books won many awards including the Caldecott Medal Honor Book for A Chair for My Mother in 1983, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award– Fiction category– for Scooter in 1994, the Jane Addams Honor for Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart in 2002, and the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature in 2009. Her books reflected her values, emphasizing love, compassion, kindness, joy, strength, individuality, and courage.

Images:

Cover of Vera B. Williams’ A Chair for My Mother, published in 1982.

Vera B. Williams, Cover for Liberation Magazine, November 1958.

Julie Valentine Center
Celebrates a Legacy of Hope:
Featuring 

Brooke Shields

Actress, Model, Author and Entrepreneur

Brooke Shields has spent her life in the spotlight. At the young age of 14 she was America’s Sweetheart, but that didn’t spare her the difficulties and insecurities faced by so many. In a conversation that deftly navigates between heartfelt and humorous, Shields talks candidly about her career trajectory and life in the public eye, living with an alcoholic parent and her own experiences as a mother. Audiences will find her story resonates with their own lives as Shields talks openly about finding the mental and emotional strength to live life to the fullest.

Actress, Model, Author and Entrepreneur, Brooke Shields began her accomplished professional career at only eleven months of age when she was selected as the Ivory Snow Baby, and by age 3 was a runway model. At age 9, Shields began her extensive film career when she won her first acting role in Alice Sweet Alice and rapidly gained fame after starring in Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby, the Palme D’or Award winner at the Cannes Film Festival, and the coming-of-age tales Blue Lagoon and Endless Love. As a model, she has graced the covers of hundreds of magazines, most notably Time Magazine as the “Face of the Eighties”. Today, Shields continues her prolific appearances in a broad range of worldwide publications, decades after it all began.

The two-part documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields (which screened to critical acclaim at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and garnered recent Emmy nominations) premiered on Hulu in April 2023. This galvanizing look at Shields as actor, model, and icon, as she transforms from sexualized young girl to a woman discovering her power, is directed by Lana Wilson ( Miss Americana ). Holding a mirror up to a society that objectifies women and girls, Shield’s story shows the perils and triumphs of gaining agency in a hostile world. The documentary is now ABC News most-watched Hulu debut program ever.

Shields will next be seen in the new romantic comedy, Mother of the Bride for Netflix. The film, directed by Mark Waters ( Mean Girls ) also stars Benjamin Bratt and Miranda Cosgrove. This generational comedy of errors follows Lana (Shields) as her daughter Emma returns from London and announces that she’s getting married the next month. Things become more complicated when Lana learns that the man who stole Emma’s heart is the son of the man who stole hers years ago.

Shields recently unveiled her latest entrepreneurial project “Commence” (formerly “Beginning is Now”), a digital platform that inspires women over 40 to live their best lives with beauty and wellness products developed for the challenges that arise during this period. Rooted in the idea that every second, minute, and day is a chance to start something new, “Commence” celebrates the complexity and diversity of women in this age group from a foundation of true well- being to overcome challenges and adversity and gain the courage to begin again. In addition to community, the site features a mix of content, commerce, and products to promote movement, self-care, rest, nutrition and foster resilience, and happiness.

Shields launched her new podcast, Now What? With Brooke Shields which is focused on asking people about pivotal moments in their lives, now available on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere podcasts are heard.

Shields has also announced an upcoming book, currently untitled, that promises to explore the humility and power of aging. Blending personal narrative and guidebook, Shields hopes to flip our popular beliefs about aging by lifting the voices of experts and everyday women who find this era of life a period for self-discovery, energy and opportunity.

In addition to her film achievements, Shields has maintained a successful and critically acclaimed television career. Her work on The NBC hit Suddenly Susan garnered her a Golden Globe nomination, and she received an American Comedy Award nod for her guest role on Friends. She is the recipient of five People’s Choice Awards, and has previously starred in NBC’s Lipstick Jungle, in addition to guest appearances on a wide range of hit shows including That 70’s Show, Hannah Montana, Two and A Half Men, The Middle, Army Wives, and Murphy Brown. Shields lent her voice to the Adult Swim animated series Mr. Pickles . She also starred in and executive produced Hallmark Movies & Mysteries’ mystery movie franchise, Flower Shop Mystery . Shields starred in Law & Order: SVU as a major recurring character in the hit show’s 19th season, and had a reoccurring guest turn as River Fields in the critically acclaimed comedy Jane The Virgin. Shields other films include, Hot Flashes, Daisy Winters, Furry Vengeance, Out of Order, A Castle for Christmas, and Holiday Harmony.

Shields is the best- selling author of several books, including The Brooke Book, On Your Own, and the highly publicized and critically acclaimed Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression. She tapped into her experiences as a mother, successfully branching out into the world of children’s books, penning Welcome To Your World, Baby and It’s the Best Day Ever Dad for Harper Collins. Her latest book There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me, quickly became a New York Times best seller.

While attending Princeton University, Shields pursued her love of Theatre as a member of the Princeton Triangle Club. Shortly after graduating with an honors degree in French literature, she made her Broadway debut as Rizzo in the hit musical Grease , for which she earned the Theatre World Award in 1994 for “Outstanding Debut on Broadway.” Shields went on to star in Chicago, Wonderful Town, and Cabaret all of which earned her rave reviews. In 2011, she assumed the iconic role of Morticia Addams alongside Roger Rees in the hit Broadway show, The Addams Family. Shields appeared in the acclaimed ensemble Girls Talk, written and directed by Roger Kumble. She also made her directorial debut with the Hollywood Bowl production of Chicago. She had her critically acclaimed nightclub debut at Feinstein’s at The Loews Regency, performing In My Life, a freewheeling music and stand- up romp through her life’s ups and downs. The show sold out its entire run. She can next be seen at her one-woman show Previously Owned by Brooke Shields, a unique theatrical event where Shields will tell her story in a way only she can, at the Café Carlyle in New York City.

In addition to her professional career, Shields continues to be a strong advocate for women’s issues and keeping the arts alive in schools. She is a happily married mother of two strong and intelligent daughters.

Buncombe County Environmental Health is hosting a FREE course for pool operators, owners, and any others who are involved in the day-to-day operation of a public pool, spa, or other body of water or are tasked with filling out the paperwork annually.

Topics that will be covered:

• How to avoid getting your annual application sent back.
• How to avoid a revisit fee and permit-action items specific to North Carolina.
• Common permit conditions.
• Industry changes and what they mean for you.
• How to properly fill out your safety data sheet:
  • How to properly measure your sump.
  • How to determine a flow reduction, if needed.
  • How to determine that your drain covers work with your pool.

The training will be in person at 200 College St. Asheville, NC 28801. It will be broken up into two sections with the latter to work on your individual datasheet with in-person help from an Environmental Health staff member. Please note that this course is NOT a Certified Pool Operator (CPO) training course. 

Please register for one of the two courses (you may register multiple people at once):

February 7, 2024, from 9 a.m. – noon. Registration closes on January 19, 2024

February 14, 2024, from 1 p.m. – 4 p.m. Registration closes on January 26, 2024

To ensure a conducive learning environment for all, the number of registrants is limited, so registration is first come, first served. Once registration has closed, you will receive a confirmation email letting you know whether or not your registration has been accepted. The course agenda will be attached to emails sent to registrants attending the course.

Beginning & Intermediate youth music classes on traditional and ol’ time instruments including but not limited to, fiddle, mandolin, banjo and guitar. Students will attend 40 minutes of music enrichment, including multiple flat-footing sessions led by Alice Kexel, story-telling, visits from guest musicians, as well as learn about the heritage of the music and the region. They will have 40 minutes of group music classes, and 40 minutes of singing or JAM rehearsal.

Advanced students will have 40 minutes of group instrument lessons, followed by 30 minutes of advanced singing including harmony and shape-note singing, and finish with 50 minutes of coached, small-ensemble rehearsal.

Classes are $15/session, for a total of $210 for the first student, and a 20% discount of $168 for each additional sibling. Parents may choose to split payments when registering. Inquire with Julie Moore at [email protected] or 864-420-6407 about scholarships.

Youth Classes

Wednesdays, 4-6 pm

Mini-grant applications are available three times during the 2023-2024 school year. You may apply one time during this cycle. Mini-grants must be used within a year after receiving the funding. 

Applications due by:

• November 30, 2023
• January 30, 2024
• March 30, 2024

If you have questions about your eligibility to apply for funding, please email us at [email protected] before submitting your application. We are unable to provide mini-grants to schools located outside of our 23-county service area or to folks who have received a grant from us within the past year. Learn more and apply here!

Exhibition and Public Programming

Vera B. Williams, an award-winning author and illustrator of children’s books, started making pictures almost as soon as she could walk. She studied at Black Mountain College in a time where summer institutes were held with classes taught by John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Williams studied under the Bauhaus luminary Josef Albers and went on to make art for the rest of her life. At the time of her death, The New York Times wrote: “Her illustrations, known for bold colors and a style reminiscent of folk art, were praised by reviewers for their great tenderness and crackling vitality.” Despite numerous awards and recognition for her children’s books, much of her wider life and work remains unexplored. This retrospective will showcase the complete range of Williams’ life and work. It will highlight her time at Black Mountain College, her political activism, and her establishment, with Paul Williams, of an influential yet little-known artist community, in addition to her work as an author and illustrator.

Author and illustrator of 17 children’s books, including Caldecott medal winner, A Chair for My Mother, Vera B. Williams always had a passion for the arts. Williams grew up in the Bronx, NY, and in 1936, when she was nine years old, one of her paintings, called Yentas, opens a new window, was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. While Williams is widely known for her children’s books today, this exhibition’s expansive scope highlights unexplored aspects of her artistic practice and eight decades of life. From groundbreaking, powerful covers for Liberation Magazine, to Peace calendar collaborations with writer activist Grace Paley, to scenic sketches for Julian Beck and Judith Malina’s Living Theater, to hundreds of late life “Aging and Illness” cartoons sketches and doodles, Vera never sat still.

Williams arrived at Black Mountain College in 1945. While there, she embraced all aspects of living, working, and learning in the intensely creative college community. She was at BMC during a particularly fertile period, which allowed her to study with faculty members Buckminster Fuller and Josef Albers, and to participate in the famed summer sessions with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, M.C. Richards, and Robert Rauschenberg. In 1948, she graduated with Josef Albers as her advisor and sculptor Richard Lippold as her outside examiner. Forever one of the College’s shining stars, Vera graduated from BMC with just six semesters of coursework, at only twenty-one years old. She continued to visit BMC for years afterward, staying deeply involved with the artistic community that BMC incubated.

Anticipating the eventual closure of BMC, Williams, alongside her husband Paul Williams and a group of influential former BMC figures, founded The Gate Hill Cooperative Artists community located 30 miles north of NYC on the outskirts of Stony Point, NY. The Gate Hill Cooperative, also known as The Land, became an outcropping of Black Mountain College’s experimental ethos. Students and faculty including John Cage, M.C. Richards, David Tudor, Karen Karnes, David Weinrib, Stan VanDerBeek, and Patsy Lynch Wood shaped Gate Hill as founding members of the community. Vera B. Williams raised her three children at Gate Hill while continuing to make work.

The early Gate Hill era represented an especially creative phase for the BMC group. For Williams, this period saw the creation of 76 covers for Liberation Magazine, a radical, groundbreaking publication. This exhibition will feature some of Williams’ most powerful Liberation covers including a design for the June 1963 edition, which contained the first full publication of MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Williams’ activism work continued throughout her life. As president of PEN’s Children Committee and member of The War Resisters league, she created a wide range of political and educational posters and journal covers. Williams protested the war in Vietnam and nuclear proliferation while supporting women’s causes and racial equality. In 1981, Williams was arrested and spent a month in a federal prison on charges stemming from her political activism.

In her late 40’s, Williams embarked in earnest on her career as a children’s book author and illustrator, a career which garnered the NY Public Library’s recognition of A Chair for My Mother as one of the greatest 100 children’s books of all time. Infinitely curious and always a wanderer at heart, Williams’ personal life was as expansive as her art. In addition to her prolific picture making, Williams started and helped run a Summerhill-based alternative school, canoed the Yukon, and lived alone on a houseboat in Vancouver Harbor. She helped to organize and attended dozens of political demonstrations throughout her adult life.

Her books won many awards including the Caldecott Medal Honor Book for A Chair for My Mother in 1983, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award– Fiction category– for Scooter in 1994, the Jane Addams Honor for Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart in 2002, and the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature in 2009. Her books reflected her values, emphasizing love, compassion, kindness, joy, strength, individuality, and courage.

Images:

Cover of Vera B. Williams’ A Chair for My Mother, published in 1982.

Vera B. Williams, Cover for Liberation Magazine, November 1958.

Gwenda Bond shares her new romantic, magical heist novel, The Frame-Up, in conversation with Megan Shepherd.

The event is free but registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance. 

Please click here to register for the VIRTUAL event. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event. 

Please click here to register for the IN-PERSON event. Note the important event details on the RSVP form.

The Frame-Up
Dani Poissant is the daughter and former accomplice of the world’s most famous art thief. There was no job too big for Maria and her loyal crew. The secret to their success? A little thing called magic, kept rigorously secret from the non-magical world. They seemed unstoppable . . . until a teenage Dani turned her mother over to the FBI.

Ten years later, with Maria still in prison, Dani finds herself approached for a job that only Maria and her crew could pull off . . . if any of them were still speaking to her. But it’s the job of a lifetime and might just be the lure Dani needs to reconcile with her mother and be reunited with her mother’s old gang—including both the love of her life and her former best friend.

The problem is, it’s an impossible task—even with the magical talents of the people she once considered family backing her up. It’s a heist that needs a year to plan, and Dani has just over a week. Worse, the more Dani learns, the more she understands that there’s far more at stake in this job than she ever realized.

Gwenda Bond is the New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including the first official Stranger Things novel, Suspicious Minds, as well as the Match Made in Hell, Lois Lane, and Cirque American series. She lives in a hundred-year-old house in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband, author Christopher Rowe, and a veritable zoo of adorable doggos and queenly cats.

New York Times bestseller and Carnegie Medal-nominated author Megan Shepherd grew up in her family’s independent bookstore in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She is the author of many acclaimed novels for readers of all ages. She now lives and writes on a haunted 130-year-old farm outside Asheville, North Carolina, with her husband and children, cats, chickens, bees, and an especially scruffy dog.

This event includes a book signing. If you would like a signed book but can’t attend in person, you may order a signed copy online below. If you would like to have your book personalized, please order online or call the store at least two hours before the start of the event. When ordering online, use the comments field to provide a name for personalization, e.g. “To Paul.” NOTE: We do our best to get books personalized when requested but personalization is not guaranteed.

If you decide to attend and to purchase books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!

Mini-grant applications are available three times during the 2023-2024 school year. You may apply one time during this cycle. Mini-grants must be used within a year after receiving the funding. 

Applications due by:

• November 30, 2023
• January 30, 2024
• March 30, 2024

If you have questions about your eligibility to apply for funding, please email us at [email protected] before submitting your application. We are unable to provide mini-grants to schools located outside of our 23-county service area or to folks who have received a grant from us within the past year. Learn more and apply here!

Exhibition and Public Programming

Vera B. Williams, an award-winning author and illustrator of children’s books, started making pictures almost as soon as she could walk. She studied at Black Mountain College in a time where summer institutes were held with classes taught by John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Williams studied under the Bauhaus luminary Josef Albers and went on to make art for the rest of her life. At the time of her death, The New York Times wrote: “Her illustrations, known for bold colors and a style reminiscent of folk art, were praised by reviewers for their great tenderness and crackling vitality.” Despite numerous awards and recognition for her children’s books, much of her wider life and work remains unexplored. This retrospective will showcase the complete range of Williams’ life and work. It will highlight her time at Black Mountain College, her political activism, and her establishment, with Paul Williams, of an influential yet little-known artist community, in addition to her work as an author and illustrator.

Author and illustrator of 17 children’s books, including Caldecott medal winner, A Chair for My Mother, Vera B. Williams always had a passion for the arts. Williams grew up in the Bronx, NY, and in 1936, when she was nine years old, one of her paintings, called Yentas, opens a new window, was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. While Williams is widely known for her children’s books today, this exhibition’s expansive scope highlights unexplored aspects of her artistic practice and eight decades of life. From groundbreaking, powerful covers for Liberation Magazine, to Peace calendar collaborations with writer activist Grace Paley, to scenic sketches for Julian Beck and Judith Malina’s Living Theater, to hundreds of late life “Aging and Illness” cartoons sketches and doodles, Vera never sat still.

Williams arrived at Black Mountain College in 1945. While there, she embraced all aspects of living, working, and learning in the intensely creative college community. She was at BMC during a particularly fertile period, which allowed her to study with faculty members Buckminster Fuller and Josef Albers, and to participate in the famed summer sessions with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, M.C. Richards, and Robert Rauschenberg. In 1948, she graduated with Josef Albers as her advisor and sculptor Richard Lippold as her outside examiner. Forever one of the College’s shining stars, Vera graduated from BMC with just six semesters of coursework, at only twenty-one years old. She continued to visit BMC for years afterward, staying deeply involved with the artistic community that BMC incubated.

Anticipating the eventual closure of BMC, Williams, alongside her husband Paul Williams and a group of influential former BMC figures, founded The Gate Hill Cooperative Artists community located 30 miles north of NYC on the outskirts of Stony Point, NY. The Gate Hill Cooperative, also known as The Land, became an outcropping of Black Mountain College’s experimental ethos. Students and faculty including John Cage, M.C. Richards, David Tudor, Karen Karnes, David Weinrib, Stan VanDerBeek, and Patsy Lynch Wood shaped Gate Hill as founding members of the community. Vera B. Williams raised her three children at Gate Hill while continuing to make work.

The early Gate Hill era represented an especially creative phase for the BMC group. For Williams, this period saw the creation of 76 covers for Liberation Magazine, a radical, groundbreaking publication. This exhibition will feature some of Williams’ most powerful Liberation covers including a design for the June 1963 edition, which contained the first full publication of MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Williams’ activism work continued throughout her life. As president of PEN’s Children Committee and member of The War Resisters league, she created a wide range of political and educational posters and journal covers. Williams protested the war in Vietnam and nuclear proliferation while supporting women’s causes and racial equality. In 1981, Williams was arrested and spent a month in a federal prison on charges stemming from her political activism.

In her late 40’s, Williams embarked in earnest on her career as a children’s book author and illustrator, a career which garnered the NY Public Library’s recognition of A Chair for My Mother as one of the greatest 100 children’s books of all time. Infinitely curious and always a wanderer at heart, Williams’ personal life was as expansive as her art. In addition to her prolific picture making, Williams started and helped run a Summerhill-based alternative school, canoed the Yukon, and lived alone on a houseboat in Vancouver Harbor. She helped to organize and attended dozens of political demonstrations throughout her adult life.

Her books won many awards including the Caldecott Medal Honor Book for A Chair for My Mother in 1983, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award– Fiction category– for Scooter in 1994, the Jane Addams Honor for Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart in 2002, and the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature in 2009. Her books reflected her values, emphasizing love, compassion, kindness, joy, strength, individuality, and courage.

Images:

Cover of Vera B. Williams’ A Chair for My Mother, published in 1982.

Vera B. Williams, Cover for Liberation Magazine, November 1958.

the Arboretum will celebrate its Great Backyard Bird Count Day with beginner bird walks, bird crafts and live bird demonstrations available to the public. This is in conjunction with the Great Backyard Bird Count, an international effort to encourage people of all ages to report their observations of birds to help scientists learn about their populations.  This program is free; however, standard non-member parking fees apply.

Exhibition and Public Programming

Vera B. Williams, an award-winning author and illustrator of children’s books, started making pictures almost as soon as she could walk. She studied at Black Mountain College in a time where summer institutes were held with classes taught by John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Williams studied under the Bauhaus luminary Josef Albers and went on to make art for the rest of her life. At the time of her death, The New York Times wrote: “Her illustrations, known for bold colors and a style reminiscent of folk art, were praised by reviewers for their great tenderness and crackling vitality.” Despite numerous awards and recognition for her children’s books, much of her wider life and work remains unexplored. This retrospective will showcase the complete range of Williams’ life and work. It will highlight her time at Black Mountain College, her political activism, and her establishment, with Paul Williams, of an influential yet little-known artist community, in addition to her work as an author and illustrator.

Author and illustrator of 17 children’s books, including Caldecott medal winner, A Chair for My Mother, Vera B. Williams always had a passion for the arts. Williams grew up in the Bronx, NY, and in 1936, when she was nine years old, one of her paintings, called Yentas, opens a new window, was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. While Williams is widely known for her children’s books today, this exhibition’s expansive scope highlights unexplored aspects of her artistic practice and eight decades of life. From groundbreaking, powerful covers for Liberation Magazine, to Peace calendar collaborations with writer activist Grace Paley, to scenic sketches for Julian Beck and Judith Malina’s Living Theater, to hundreds of late life “Aging and Illness” cartoons sketches and doodles, Vera never sat still.

Williams arrived at Black Mountain College in 1945. While there, she embraced all aspects of living, working, and learning in the intensely creative college community. She was at BMC during a particularly fertile period, which allowed her to study with faculty members Buckminster Fuller and Josef Albers, and to participate in the famed summer sessions with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, M.C. Richards, and Robert Rauschenberg. In 1948, she graduated with Josef Albers as her advisor and sculptor Richard Lippold as her outside examiner. Forever one of the College’s shining stars, Vera graduated from BMC with just six semesters of coursework, at only twenty-one years old. She continued to visit BMC for years afterward, staying deeply involved with the artistic community that BMC incubated.

Anticipating the eventual closure of BMC, Williams, alongside her husband Paul Williams and a group of influential former BMC figures, founded The Gate Hill Cooperative Artists community located 30 miles north of NYC on the outskirts of Stony Point, NY. The Gate Hill Cooperative, also known as The Land, became an outcropping of Black Mountain College’s experimental ethos. Students and faculty including John Cage, M.C. Richards, David Tudor, Karen Karnes, David Weinrib, Stan VanDerBeek, and Patsy Lynch Wood shaped Gate Hill as founding members of the community. Vera B. Williams raised her three children at Gate Hill while continuing to make work.

The early Gate Hill era represented an especially creative phase for the BMC group. For Williams, this period saw the creation of 76 covers for Liberation Magazine, a radical, groundbreaking publication. This exhibition will feature some of Williams’ most powerful Liberation covers including a design for the June 1963 edition, which contained the first full publication of MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Williams’ activism work continued throughout her life. As president of PEN’s Children Committee and member of The War Resisters league, she created a wide range of political and educational posters and journal covers. Williams protested the war in Vietnam and nuclear proliferation while supporting women’s causes and racial equality. In 1981, Williams was arrested and spent a month in a federal prison on charges stemming from her political activism.

In her late 40’s, Williams embarked in earnest on her career as a children’s book author and illustrator, a career which garnered the NY Public Library’s recognition of A Chair for My Mother as one of the greatest 100 children’s books of all time. Infinitely curious and always a wanderer at heart, Williams’ personal life was as expansive as her art. In addition to her prolific picture making, Williams started and helped run a Summerhill-based alternative school, canoed the Yukon, and lived alone on a houseboat in Vancouver Harbor. She helped to organize and attended dozens of political demonstrations throughout her adult life.

Her books won many awards including the Caldecott Medal Honor Book for A Chair for My Mother in 1983, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award– Fiction category– for Scooter in 1994, the Jane Addams Honor for Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart in 2002, and the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature in 2009. Her books reflected her values, emphasizing love, compassion, kindness, joy, strength, individuality, and courage.

Images:

Cover of Vera B. Williams’ A Chair for My Mother, published in 1982.

Vera B. Williams, Cover for Liberation Magazine, November 1958.

Join the Buncombe County Special Collections and our partners from the Thomas Wolfe Memorial and Vance Birthplace State Historic Sites for a mini-symposium examining issues of race in Thomas Wolfe’s Asheville and how those themes continue to impact our community in the present.

Saturday, February 17, 2024, 2:30 pm, Lord Auditorium Dr. Darin Waters (Deputy Secretary of Archives and History for North Carolina) and Dr. Kevin Young (Appalachian State University) will present short lectures on Thomas Wolfe’s examination of race in his works Welcome to Our City and Child By Tiger followed by a facilitated Q&A.

Light refreshments will be provided courtesy of the Mountain History and Culture Group.

A 2 hour hands-on experience with a Barista learning about espresso on a pro espresso machine. Anyone who has a home espresso machine and wants to learn their way around the machine, make better espresso, steam latte better, or is looking to get a machine would enjoy taking this workshop and learn a lot! We use only locally roasted beans in all our offerings. 4 people per class. $125 a person.